Truck Rides, Tacos & Giving in Santa Catarina

The next town over from us is a beautiful little town called Santa Catarina. After spending all day on Calle Santander talking to vendors about where their artisans & suppliers are, we decided to start with the Mayan people of Santa Catarina. To get there, we had to take a ride in the back of the local pickup truck, which picked up people outside of the local grocery store–just a quick block up from our apartment.

We hopped in the back with the locals and took off on the windy road around the lake to Santa Catarina. The views on the ride were spectacular looking over giant Lake Atitlan and its surrounding volcanos.

In just 10 mins we were in this very small town filled with kids and women wearing the same colored & patterned shirts. We later found out that each town around the lake has its own unique shirt that everyone in town wears to show their pride in the town that they come from.

At this point, we were starving, so we walked right past the big white church and sat down at the closest taco spot. As we were waiting for our food, we realized that there were a TON of kids all around us. They were all curious about us as we were clearly not from the area and gathered around us in the street. We thought right away that this would be the perfect opportunity to give away some LOOTB school supplies.

We first asked the woman cooking our tacos if we could give school supplies to the kids in the taqueria. With a surprised look on her face, she instantly said yes. We pulled out the supplies from our backpack that we carry filled with notebooks as all times and entered inside. I approached the first cute little girl and began speaking to her in Spanish. I asked her if I could give her a gift for school and she got so excited.

I went on to ask her the typical questions we ask each child we give school supplies to: what is your favorite subject in school and what do you want to be when you grow up? With a big smile on her face, she told me that she loved art and when she grew up she wanted to be a teacher. I told her that she can do anything she wanted to in the whole world and that she would be a great teacher.

We then went on to give supplies to the rest of her siblings and then headed out to the street to talk to the kids we had seen out there.

We ended up giving out our entire supply of notebooks & pencils within 30 mins to several children.

We were so excited about giving and talking to the kids that we had forgotten our tacos! We told the kids that we were out, but that we would be back very soon. We grabbed our tacos and headed out to see more of the very small town. It only took us about 20 mins to cover the entire town and after walking down to the water to see some products, we decided to head back to Panajachel to find a local liberia where we could buy more school supplies from. We were going to need a lot.